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The history of Caius is veiled in obscurity. All that we know of him is that he was a very learned ecclesiastical writer, who at the beginning of the third century held a disputation with Proclus in Rome (cf. Bk. VI. chap. 20, below). The accounts of him given by Jerome, Theodoret, and Nicephorus are drawn from Eusebius and furnish us no new data. Photius, however (
Bibl. XLVIII.), reports that Caius was said to have been a presbyter of the Roman Church during the episcopates of Victor and Zephyrinus, and to have been elected “Bishop of the Gentiles,” and hence he is commonly spoken of as a presbyter of the Roman Church, though the tradition rests certainly upon a very slender foundation, as Photius lived some six hundred years after Caius, and is the first to mention the fact. Photius also, although with hesitation, ascribes to Caius a work
On the Cause of the Universe,
and one called The Labyrinth,
and another Against the Heresy of Artemon (see below, Bk. V. chap. 28, note 1). The first of these (and by some the last also), is now commonly ascribed to Hippolytus. Though the second may have been written by Caius it is no longer extant, and hence all that we have of his writings are the fragments of the
Dialogue with Proclus preserved by Eusebius in this chapter and in Bk. III. chaps. 28, 31. The absence of any notice of the personal activity of so distinguished a writer has led some critics (e.g. Salmon in Smith and Wace, I. p. 386, who refers to Lightfoot,
Journal of Philology, I. 98, as holding the same view) to assume the identity of Caius and Hippolytus, supposing that Hippolytus in the
Dialogue with Proclus styled himself simply by his prænomen Caius and that thus as the book fell into the hands of strangers the tradition arose of a writer Caius who in reality never had a separate existence. This theory is ingenious, and in many respects plausible, and certainly cannot be disproved (owing chiefly to our lack of knowledge about Caius), and yet in the absence of any proof that Hippolytus actually bore the prænomen Caius it can be regarded as no more than a bare hypothesis. The two are distinguished by Eusebius and by all the writers who mention them. On Caius’ attitude toward the Apocalypse, see Bk. III. chap. 28, note 4; and on his opinion in regard to the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, see Bk. VI. chap. 20, and Bk. III. chap. 3, note 17. The fragments of Caius (including fragments from the
Little Labyrinth, mentioned above) are given with annotations in Routh’s
Rel. Sacræ, II. 125–158 and in translation (with the addition of the Muratorian Fragment, wrongly ascribed to Caius by its discoverer) in the
Ante-Nicene Fathers, V. 599–604. See also the article of Salmon in Smith and Wace, of Harnack, in Herzog (2d ed.), and Schaff’s
Ch. Hist. II. p. 775 sqq.
9 ἐκκλησιαστικὸς ἀνἡρ.
10 γεγονώς. Crusè translates “born”; but Eusebius cannot have meant that, for in Bk. VI. chap. 20 he tells us that Caius’ disputation with Proclus was held during the episcopate of Zephyrinus. He used γεγονώς, therefore, as to indicate that at that time he came into public notice, as we use the word “arose.”
11 On Zephyrinus, see below, Bk. V. chap. 28, §7.
12 This Proclus probably introduced Montanism into Rome at the beginning of the third century. According to Pseudo-Tertullian (
Adv. omnes Hær.
chap. 7) he was a leader of one division of the Montanists, the other division being composed of followers of Æschines. He is probably to be identified with the
Proculus noster,
classed by Tertullian, in Adv. Val.
chap. 5, with Justin Martyr, Miltiades, and Irenæus as a successful opponent of heresy.
13 The sect of the Montanists. Called the “Phrygian heresy,” from the fact that it took its rise in Phrygia. Upon Montanism, see below, Bk. IV. chap. 27, and especially Bk. V. chap. 16 sqq.
14 The δὲ here makes it probable that Caius, in reply to certain claims of Proclus, was asserting over against him the ability of the Roman church to exhibit the true trophies of the greatest of all the apostles. And what these claims of Proclus were can perhaps be gathered from his words, quoted by Eusebius in Bk. III. chap. 31, §4, in which Philip and his daughters are said to have been buried in Hierapolis. That these two sentences were closely connected in the original is quite possible.
15 According to an ancient tradition, Peter was crucified upon the hill of Janiculum, near the Vatican, where the Church of San Pietro in Montorio now stands, and the hole in which his cross stood is still shown to the trustful visitor. A more probable tradition makes the scene of execution the Vatican hill, where Nero’s circus was, and where the persecution took place. Baronius makes the whole ridge on the right bank of the Tiber one hill, and thus reconciles the two traditions. In the fourth century the remains of Peter were transferred from the Catacombs of San Sebastiano (where they are said to have been interred in 258 a.d.) to the Basilica of St. Peter, which occupied the sight of the present basilica on the Vatican.
16 Paul was beheaded, according to tradition, on the Ostian way, at the spot now occupied by the Abbey of the Three Fountains. The fountains, which are said to have sprung up at the spots where Paul’s head struck the ground three times after the decapitation, are still shown, as also the pillar to which he is supposed to have been bound! In the fourth century, at the same time that Peter’s remains were transferred to the Vatican, Paul’s remains are said to have been buried in the Basilica of St. Paul, which occupied the site now marked by the church of San Paolo fuori le mura. There is nothing improbable in the traditions as to the spot where Paul and Peter met their death. They are as old as the second century; and while they cannot be accepted as indisputably true (since there is always a tendency to fix the deathplace of a great man even if it is not known), yet on the other hand if Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome, it is hardly possible that the place of their death and burial could have been forgotten by the Roman church itself within a century and a half.
17 Neither Paul nor Peter founded the Roman church in the strict sense, for there was a congregation of believers there even before Paul came to Rome, as his Epistle to the Romans shows, and Peter cannot have reached there until some time after Paul. It was, however, a very early fiction that Paul and Peter together founded the church in that city.
18 On Dionysius of Corinth, see below, Bk. IV. chap. 23.
19 Another quotation from this epistle is given in Bk. IV. chap. 23. The fragments are discussed by Routh,
Rel. Sac. I. 179 sq.
20 Whatever may be the truth of Dionysius’ report as to Peter’s martyrdom at Rome, he is almost certainly in error in speaking as he does of Peter’s work in Corinth. It is difficult, to be sure, to dispose of so direct and early a tradition, but it is still more difficult to accept it. The statement that Paul and Peter together planted the Corinthian church is certainly an error, as we know that it was Paul’s own church, founded by him alone. The so-called Cephas party, mentioned in 1 Cor. i., is perhaps easiest explained by the previous presence and activity of Peter in Corinth, but this is by no means necessary, and the absence of any reference to the fact in the two epistles of Paul renders it almost absolutely impossible. It is barely possible, though by no means probable, that Peter visited Corinth on his way to Rome (assuming the Roman journey) and that thus, although the church had already been founded many years, he became connected in tradition with its early days, and finally with its origination. But it is more probable that the tradition is wholly in error and arose, as Neander suggests, partly from the mention of Peter in 1 Cor. i., partly from the natural desire to ascribe the origin of this great apostolic church to the two leading apostles, to whom in like manner the founding of the Roman church was ascribed. It is significant that this tradition is recorded only by a Corinthian, who of course had every inducement to accept such a report, and to repeat it in comparing his own church with the central church of Christendom. We find no mention of the tradition in later writers, so far as I am aware.
21 κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν. The κατὰ allows some margin in time and does not necessarily
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